conference proceedings - Australian Army

156
THE AUSTRALIAN ARMY AND THE VIETNAM WAR 1962–1972
fear of the Communist side introducing nuclear weapons into the war, he should not
worry, said Kennedy. The US had the capability to ‘deliver a more crippling blow to
the Soviets than they had originally launched’, about three to eight times ‘quantitatively
and far ahead quality-wise’. 14
The US found Park vulnerable to its pressure to scale back Korea’s military
establishment because of his precarious hold on power. As one US official described
deridingly, Park’s revolutionary council was composed of ‘a bunch of lieutenant colonels’
who had no experience governing a nation. They also had enough enemies within Korea’s
military and the political establishment. The Kennedy Administration’s withholding
recognition or interrupting the flow of aid to Korea would have guaranteed Park’s
unraveling. After all, as noted by American officials, in Korea, ‘the United States was
the only game in town’. 15 Therefore, following Park’s coup, the administration’s Task
Force on Korea urged Kennedy to mix ‘friendship and firmness’, or more commonly
speaking, carrot and stick. It should be made known to Park that the US was willing
to ‘contribute significant additional assistance’, but also that it was ‘ready to withhold
such assistance if necessary to force appropriate Korean action’. That action included
a ‘substantial reduction in [South Korean] forces’. In conjunction, the smaller forces of
Korea should now contribute more to internal security, civil works and economic growth.
The nation builders of Washington wanted Korean soldiers to be utilised for ‘National
Construction Service and other appropriate civil works projects’. They would learn the
‘skills and vocations’ with which they could make ‘a greater contribution to [building]
Korean infrastructure’ during and after their military service, insisted Washington. 16
According to this plan, Korean soldiers would spend more time with shovels than rifles,
and learn to operate bulldozers rather than to fire howitzers. Also, Washington hoped to
cut the corners of its military aid by requiring Seoul to procure the part of its military
needs that could be produced in Korea rather than relying on the shipments from the US.
And the biggest ticketed item: the Koreans living with a smaller US military presence
in its midst.
To Park, Washington’s nation builders were misreading and misleading Kim Il
Sung and his patrons in moscow and Beijing, and underestimating the value of Seoul’s
contribution to containment in Northeast Asia. Park saw another Achesonean debacle
on the horizon. In the minds of most of Koreans, including Park’s, Dean Acheson,
President Harry Truman’s Secretary of State, was the root cause of the Korean War. In
January 1950, only a few months after the withdrawal of American forces from South
Korea, Acheson enunciated during a National Press Club speech that South Korea was
14. memorandum of Conversation: US-Korean Relations, 14 November 1961, ibid., 537.
15. House Committee on International Relations, Investigation of Korean-American Relations: Report of
the Subcommittee on International Organization, 95th Congress, 2nd Session, 1978, 164.
16. Presidential Task Force on Korea, 1-9.